Parents, child educators and other specialists concerned with proper child development have determined that excessive television viewing by children can be counterproductive, and in some cases can be an impediment to the child's development in many ways.
Consequently, there is a need for a practical, simplified, reliable and inexpensive means to limit the time of television viewing by children and others, particularly where voluntary restrictions are not successful. The device or means must not injure the television receiver when in use and must not require physical alteration of the receiver to be practical. Ideally, the device should be a simple, self-contained unit which can be plugged into a household wall outlet and into which the power cable of the television receiver can be plugged. The objective of this invention is to satisfy all of these requirements in an extremely simplified and inexpensive device which can be operated by a child merely by depositing a token into the device. The token or tokens may constitute an award for good behavior and may be delivered to the child by the parent in a controlled manner, as the parent sees fit in a given circumstance. The token is in the form of a permanent magnet and the use of money to operate the device is thus obviated.
The prior art contains teachings attempting to deal with the above problem but in a much more complex and costly manner. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,317,213 discloses a television reception interfering apparatus which operates in conjunction with the antenna of the television receiver to cause interference with incoming television broadcast signals to effectively block reception. The apparatus requires a number of signal generating circuits, each set to generate a signal substantially equal to the carrier frequency of a corresponding television broadcast signal. The apparatus is relatively expensive and complicated and requires a keyboard to operate.
A comparable commercial television viewing control system known as CENSORVIEW is manufactured and sold by Censorview Ltd., Costa Mesa, Calif. This device or system is also relatively expensive and involves a keyboard unit, and therefore does not satisfy the requirements which the present invention completely satisfies with economy and extreme simplicity.
Other features and advances of the invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art during the course of the following description.